Former WWE chief takes helm at SBA

By: Claude Solnik February 16, 2017Comments Off on Former WWE chief takes helm at SBA

The Small Business Administration has a new leader with a background in small, medium-sized business and show business who is very prepared to wrestle with burdensome regulation.

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved President Donald Trump’s nomination of Linda McMahon as the 25th Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

McMahon is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Women’s Leadership LIVE and co-founder and former CEO of WWE. She was also the Republican nominee for Connecticut U.S. Senate seats in 2010 and 2012.

The SBA described McMahon, a graduate of East Carolina University, as an “advocate for small business” who continues to promote entrepreneurship, particularly among women.

“Small businesses are the engine of our national economy,” McMahon said after being confirmed. “I will work to revitalize a spirit of entrepreneurship in America.”

McMahon immediately took on what she described as a regulatory burden that can be particularly weighty for small companies.

“Small businesses want to feel they can take a risk on an expansion or a new hire without fearing onerous new regulations or unexpected taxes, fees and fines that will make such growth unaffordable,” she said. “We want to renew optimism in our economy.”

McMahon succeeds Joe Loddo, who served as Acting Administrator, leading a federal agency with more than 2,000 full-time employees.

“McMahon’s experience as an entrepreneur and small business owner is welcomed in the New York District,” Beth Goldberg, district director for the SBA’s New York office, said in a written statement.

She in earlier testimony before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, talked about her own experiences in business.

“As an entrepreneur myself, I have shared the experiences of our nation’s small business owners,” McMahon said. “My husband and I built our business from scratch. We started out sharing a desk. Over decades of hard work and strategic growth, we built it into a publicly traded global enterprise with more than 800 employees.”

She added that she believes in “setting expectations and holding people accountable, but trusting them to do the job for which they were hired,” adding she plans to listen to SBA staff “and their ideas, concerns and recommendations will be taken seriously.”